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 MRS. ISAAC L. RICE.
Mrs. Isaac L. Rice, organizer of the Anti-noise Society, was born in New Oreans,
Louisiana, May 2, 1860. Is the
daughter of Nathaniel and Annie HyneBarnett and is the wife of Isaac L. Rice, a
prominent lawyer of New York City.
On her mother's side, Mrs. Rice descended from Elias Hyneman, a native of
Holland who came to this country in the
eighteenth century. Mrs. Rice received a classical and musical education and
also completed a course at the Woman's
Medical College of the New York Infirmary in New York City, where she took her
degree of M.D., in 1885, but soon
after this she was married and abandoned the plan of practicing her profession.
Her home is one of elegance and distinction
on the Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River in the city of New York.
The situation of her home brought to her
attention as one of the sufferers the unnecessary noise of the river craft which
rendered her days uncomfortable and her
nights sleepless. The long distance signaling indulged in by tugs on their way
up and down the river, their shrieking sirens,
even when two miles away from the pier, became insufferable. At one time Mrs.
Rice planned to sell her house and
move to a quieter neighborhood, but learning that the inmates of the hospitals
along the East River were sufferers from
these same river noises and that no attempt had been made to obtain relief for
them, she then determined to devote
herself to this work. She had hitherto been unaccustomed to any public effort,
having lived a quiet, domestic, home life. To
convince the most skeptical of the extent of the nuisance, Mrs. Rice had careful
records made on various nights of the
number and duration of the whistle blasts, engaging for this purpose law
students from the Columbia University, their
reports being duly attested. From these it was learned that almost three
thousand blasts could be noted in one locality
during a period of eight hours, from ten p. m. to six a. m. She recognized the
fact that this whistling was not called for either
by statute or emergency requirements and that it could be dispensed with by
having watchmen on their piers and by a
system of like signals. She contended, furthermore, that this unnecessary
whistling was not only a general public nuisance,
but a grave menace to health ; that it was also a detriment to navigation,
because it covered or rendered difficult to
distinguish, those signals which were necessary or demanded by law, from the
unnecessary and that in justice to all they
ought to be immediately suppressed. She gathered data from all of the municipal
institutions exposed to noise and from
every one came the plea for relief. All of this testimony was corroborated by
the most eminent physicians in New York.
She appealed to the municipal and state authorities, but in vain, as they
contended that it was a local nuisance on a federal
waterway, and therefore, the municipal authorities had no right to act.
Therefore, it was stated there was nobody in the
United States who had the right to regulate the size of a boat whistle or to
forbid useless handling of the same. After a
year's constant effort Congressman Bennett succeeded in having a law passed
through Congress, giving authority to the
Board of Supervising Inspectors to punish unnecessary whistling. Mrs. Rice then
decided to organize a society composed
of representative men in the various cities of the United States to abate one of
the gravest ills of city life — unnecessary
noise. She has succeeded in interesting in this work Archbishop Farley, Bishop
Greer, the commissioner of health, the
president of the Academy of Medicine, the president of Columbia University, the
College of the city of New York and the
New York University, the late Richard Watson Gilder and the late Mark Twain and
William Dean Howells, and many
other distinguished physicians, educators and public men. Europe has also taken
up the work in the most encouraging
manner. Germany, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and England now have
organizations, and the appeal of this
society in many of the cities has brought about the granting of "quiet zones"
around city hospitals. Mrs. Rice has organized
also a children's society, in which Mark Twain took a great interest and was at
the time of his death its president. The latest
phase of Mrs. Rice's work is to form a national committee of the governors of
all the states in order to make this
movement country-wide. This work and great movement instigated by the
persistency and perseverance of one woman
entirely unaided is acknowledged to be one of the most revolutionizing reforms
of the century, and Mrs. Rice's
courageous perseverance and ceaseless efforts denote a character worthy of the
widest emulation. Mrs. Rice is a refined,
cultured woman, an accomplished musician and linguist and occupies a high social
position in the city of New York. She is
a woman of literary ability and has contributed to many of the leading
magazines.
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